Aural "Hangovers"

[John Musselwhite]

>>string while tuning. I always seem to be aurraly very tired after
>>leaving one of these appointments. The area techs I have talked to
>>also seem to have the same problem but noone seems to have any
>>solutions that we all haven't tried yet. Would any of you like to
>>comment or offer any ideas?

>straight out of the box. I would agree with you about being tired, they are
>so bright, noisy, and the pins are so tight it almost makes me wish for
>another line of work. Then I get to a Yamaha console I've tuned several

One solution for the noise problem is to visit an audiologist and purchase a
set of "musician's ear plugs" or another type of fitted attenuation device.
This can help the problem of a sound hangover and make a second tuning a bit
easier on the ears.

BTW, I've learned not to pound too hard on these pianos and prefer preparing
them first by tapping down coils, the strings over the bridges and the hitch
pin loops and knots and levelling strings in the agraffes if it's a grand.
It takes less time to do that than it does to repair broken key-sticks,
hammer shanks and strings and is somewhat more permanent.

Mind you, all those things should be done to most pianos anyway if you don't
know it hasn't been done. I prefer to coax a piano into staying in tune
rather than beating it into them... B-})

                        John
John Musselwhite, RPT
Calgary, Alberta Canada
musselj@cadvision.com